Providing a scenic background for studio photography is well known in the art using backdrop screens, but such screens do not provide a realistic background. The present invention improves upon the prior art by providing a system and method for high-resolution and highly realistic backdrops for studio photography.
Printed prior art backdrop screens for photography are printed using a direct printing process wherein a liquid ink is deposited directly on an opaque, reflective screen. While this type of printing works for reflective backdrops, direct printing does not work well for backlit displays or graphics because the ink used in direct printing tends to block light passing through a substrate upon which the ink is deposited.
In contrast, a dye sublimation process, when used in the present invention, heats a solid dye directly in contact with the media, converting the dye to a gas that diffuses directly into the media. Thus, while direct printing results in a layer of ink deposited on a surface of the substrate or media, dye sublimation printing actually fuses the dye colors into the media itself. Where the media or substrate is a plastic transparent or translucent material, the plastic itself becomes colored by the dye.
Dye sublimation printing is ideal for printing on large plastic sheet materials such as used in backlit commercial signage, plastic sheet banners and the like into which images are impressed and incorporated directly into the plastic sheet media by heat. However, such plastic sheet materials having dye sublimation-printed images such as those used for signage do not work well to produce realistic photographic backdrops, at least partially because these materials exhibit “hot spots” when backlit, and glare when illuminated from the front. By way of example, FIG. 1 shows an advertising sign of the prior art currently in use and printed using a dye sublimation process, and which clearly shows hot spots where two fluorescent tubes are illuminated behind the sign. It is thus readily apparent that such a combination of a backlit plastic sheet material with a graphic image printed using a dye sublimation process is unsuitable for a photographic backdrop.
To Applicant's knowledge, no photographic backdrop screens are currently produced using a dye sublimation process. Rather, direct printing is the preferred printing for producing backdrop screens, these screens producing the graphic image by reflection from the backdrop.
For purposes of summarizing the invention, certain aspects, advantages, and novel features of the invention are described herein. It is to be understood that not necessarily all such advantages may be achieved in accordance with any one particular embodiment of the invention. Thus, the invention may be embodied or carried out in a manner that achieves or optimizes one advantage or group of advantages as taught herein without necessarily achieving other advantages as may be taught or suggested herein.